Steam & Excursion > Question for PRR Historians

So I was reading this topic...

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,1587638,page=1

And reading all those stories about how awful PRR was about repairing and maintaining their engines, I just have to ask the question... WHY?

Did they always take care of their engines so poorly? Or did it start only later, say after the war?

Overall, just WHAT HAPPENED to the Pennsy? From what I've read (admittedly, not much), I get the impression that things were ok up until 1946, then it seems everything went haywire and it was just a slow, gradual tailspin until it crashed.

Is that a false impression? Or were things bad-off even before then? Were there big changes in the higher ups that brought in more idealistic and less realistic individuals who hadn't a clue how to properly run the railroad?

I'm just trying to get a good idea of what went wrong with the railroad and what really caused its demise.

One of my theories is that they went so all in on Duplex type engines (sorry T1 folks) that they used up too much money.
Seems like they just weren't the same after all of that.
Your mileage may vary.

Look at the PRR of the late 1940s....bleeding money big time. The vast majority of their steam engines were 20-30 years old and had been run into the ground in WW2. These engines were very basic and did not require high skill to maintain. The shop crews had maintained the same engines for their entire career. The T1 arrives. It is different, complex and the railroad doesn't have a lot of money. Parts were not readily available at all service points. Crews, both operating and shop received little training on the T1. And by the way, on the next track is this new gee whiz machine called the diesel. And what was the purpose of the T1? Eliminate double headed K4s, meaning cutting road jobs. The T1 sailed into the perfect storm. Basically the T1 was born a decade too late. Had the T1 showed up in 1936....who knows.

There is a lot of truth in what you are saying. But still, too bad they didn't preserve an example of each.

Tom... Yes, those are problems I've consistently heard raised about PRRs operations.

This subject intrigues me because generally, with any company that has seen great success followed by great failure, the downward spiral, many times, can be traced back to incompetent or completely clueless higher-ups and an ever-widening gap between them and those who have to carry out their policies. Correct me if I'm wrong but that seems to be exactly what happened with the Pennsy, in spades. The person(s) in charge of locomotive development seemed to not only have overly progressive ideas for a traditionally conservative company, but also lacked the common sense to realize that the success of these experimental engines depended entirely on whether or not those left to take care of them had the proper training and equipment to do so. I could see them making that mistake once....but Pennsy, with the S1, Q1, T1, S2, and Q2, did it repeatedly! Were the higher-ups THAT out-of-touch??

Granted, I'm sure there's a LOT more complexities and red-tape to running a railroad than I could possibly fathom, so if my logic is flawed, please enlighten me. :-)